It was the prisoner, Thomas Edwards. A collapsing beam had torn away
some bricks from the wall of his cell, and he came wriggling through
the aperture, using the most dreadful oaths.
"Stir yourselves--Oh,--,--, stir yourselves! Standin' there like
a--lot of stuck pigs! Get out the Admiral! The Admiral, I tell you!
. . . . Hark to the poor old devil, damnin' away down ther, wi' two
hundredweight o' table pressin' against his belly!"
Mr. Edwards, in fact, used an even more vulgar word. But he was not
stopping to weigh words. Magistrates, Inspector, Clerk--he took
charge of them all on the spot--a master of men. The Admiral, in the
unfathomed dark of the cellar, was indeed uttering language to make
your hair creep.
"Oh, cuss away, y' old varmint!" sang down Mr. Edwards cheerfully.
"The louder you cuss, the better the hearin'; 'means ye have air to
breathe an' nothin' broke internal. . . . Eh? Oh, _I_ knows th' old
warrior! Opened a gate for en once when he was out hare-huntin', up
St. Germans way--I likes a bit o' sport, I do, when I happens on it.
Lord love ye, the way he damned my eyes for bein' slow about it!
. .
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